Antonio Adriano PuleoI Am a Bird Now

They Know Why They’re There
2009
Wall mural with 3 paintings
Latex and acrylic on Wall
Site specific - Includes 3 individual paintings: It’s Hard To Say Goodbye, Say What I Say, Do What I Do, You Are All Alright

Cherry and Martin presents Antonio Adriano Puleo’s exhibition I Am a Bird Now, featuring ecstatic murals, paintings and sculpture that possess a bold fusion of natural history and modern abstraction. This will be the first solo exhibition at the gallery’s new location at 2712 S. La Cienega Blvd.

Antonio Adriano Puleo’s pictorial exploration is a twenty-first century hybrid of art history, including the painterly experimentations of modern abstraction as well as the illustrations of the 19th century American naturalist John James Audubon and Medieval illumination. The third in a series of solo shows by Puleo, I Am a Bird Now, follows up on two previous exhibitions, To This World I Must Give In (2005) and Birds and Beasts (2007). Whereas Puleo’s previous exhibitions furthered a pictorial investigation of the tensions between opposing forces (Birds and Beasts) and the individual’s place amongst these tensions (To This World I Must Give In), Puleo’s new body of work explores the manipulation of these tensions through symmetry, pattern and the hermeticism of alchemy. Inherent in Puleo’s work is the translucent dimension of ecstasy, the idea that revelation can be had through the polarities of perfect geometrical proportions, radiant color and a visceral connection to the material world.

Central to the exhibition and the artist’s concerns are two wall installations, Follow The Light (2009) and They Know Why They’re There (2009). Painting becomes architecture as vibrant bands of color seamlessly emerge from strategically placed, intimate canvases. These small paintings, whose compositions magnify exponentially onto the gallery walls, chart the implicit energy of expansion and contraction.

Antonio Adriano Puleo has recently shown work at LAXART (Los Angeles), China Art Objects (Los Angeles) and Schmidt Dean (Philadelphia). He has shown at the Flash Art Museum in Trevi and the Fondazione Antonio Ratti in Como, Italy, as well as at galleries in New York, Las Vegas, Boston and Portland. Articles and reviews have appeared in Art Review, The New Yorker, Nylon, LA Weekly and Las Vegas Sun. Puleo graduated with an MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles.